Gideon's War/Hard Target (50 page)

For each potential threat that might menace any major event, the Secret Service develops a written protocol. There is, for instance, a thirteen-page document filed away in the Secret Service headquarters that details the steps for foiling the deployment of an exploding radioactive pacemaker. The Secret Service has developed hundreds of protocols. To prevent airborne attacks through the HVAC system, there is a document that lists thirty-one so-called “Action Events,” including specific team member assignments, seventeen on the “Prevent List” and fourteen on the “React List.” Action Event number eleven on the “Prevent List” requires that before anyone enters the room with access to the gas furnace and blowers, authorization from the supervising agent of the protection detail be given. Furthermore, two armed guards are to accompany any technicians entering the HVAC Access Room. If any compressed gases are to be connected to the system, those gases are to undergo an additional and final inspection by a designated specialist and supervised by the senior facility specialist—who, in this instance, was Special Agent Shanelle Klotz.

“Before we go to into the Access Room,” Wilmot said to Shanelle Klotz, “let’s review our protocol. Here’s how this is going to work . . .”

Three minutes later they arrived at the door where two agents waited for them.

Shanelle nodded curtly to them and said, “One of you come in, the other stay outside on the door.”

The agent followed them into the room. Wilmot waited until the door was closed, then hit him in the head with a pipe wrench. As the agent felt to his knees, Collier looped tape around his mouth, then flex-cuffed him.

“You told me you weren’t going to hurt him,” Agent Klotz said.

“I lied,” Wilmot said.

Collier looked at his watch. “Fifty-three minutes.”

“Go outside and tell the guy on the door that everything’s copacetic for now, so he can go back to his regular assignment.”

Shanelle Klotz opened the door. “We’re good here. You can go back to your post.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The agent, a large man in a gray suit, lumbered up the hallway and disappeared.

“Agent Klotz,” Wilmot said, “I want you to understand that we have an extremely clear picture of how you do your job here. We know the emergency phrases, password sequences, authentication procedures, the chain of command—the whole bit. We know that today if you use the phras he
Athe phrase ‘par for the course’ during a conversation with another agent, you have just signaled to him that an attack on the president is unfolding. So, unless you want Wendy to suffer whatever that maniac Lorene Verhoven has in store for her, I suggest you avoid saying ‘par for the course’ to anyone today.”

Wilmot had a certain amount of information about the Secret Service protection detail, but there were distinct holes. The trick to managing Shanelle Klotz was to use the little details he did know to make it seem as though he knew everything there was to know. The more she thought he knew, the less likely she was to do something stupid.

As he was talking, Shanelle said, “Well, then you know we need to make one final check of these tanks full of, what, nerve gas? Ricin? Zyklon B?”

“Just for your own peace of mind,” Wilmot said, “I want you to know that what we are doing is staging a massive protest. These tanks contain CS gas. I’m sure you know what it is.”

“Tear gas.”

“Yeah, well, they call it tear gas. But it makes you throw up is what it really does.”

“So you’re not trying to kill anybody?”

Wilmot shook his head. “This government is out of control. We believe that a massive shake-up is needed, and this action we’re taking here is going to show how weak and silly and vulnerable our nation’s government is. But we’re not here to kill people. So you don’t need to be wrestling with the question of whether or not to sacrifice your family to save all those fat cats out there. You’d just be throwing away your husband’s and children’s lives for nothing.”

Wilmot wasn’t sure whether the agent would swallow his lie or not. But it was worth a try. He knew getting someone to believe something—even if it was impossible—was often the difference between making him take action and succumbing to inertia. If his lie made her think for a fraction of a second longer about trying to stop them—well, that fraction of a second could be the difference between the success or failure of the operation.”

“I’m not sure if I believe you,” Shanelle Klotz said.

“I don’t give a damn if you do or if you don’t,” he said. “Call the guy with the sniffer dog. Let’s get this last thing over with.”

Klotz talked into her sleeve.

“Fifty-one minutes,” Collier said.

48

TYSONS CORNER, VIRGINIA

As soon as she said “It’s done,” Lorene wobbled and clutched at the stair railing. The phone slipped from her hands, and she fell backward, sliding down the wall. She left a long smear of blood on the cream-colored paint.

Verhoven rushed to her side. “Lorene!” he shouted. “Lorene!”

Lorene’s head lolled forward.

Rheiiiiiiiii D‡20;Lorene!”

Lorene emitted a soft snoring sound. Tillman had heard that sound before. It was the sound of somebody who was not going to make it unless they got help damn quickly.

Whatever the doctor had done, it wasn’t enough. The IV had given her a short burst of energy. But she’d burned through it fast, and now she was in bad shape.

Verhoven crouched over his wife, shaking her. She didn’t respond. His face hardened, and Tillman saw something in his eyes that he knew meant things were about to end badly here.

“What did you do?” Verhoven shouted at Dr. Klotz. “What the hell did you do?”

“Hold on, hold on,” Tillman said, grabbing Verhoven’s shoulder. “We both watched him. He didn’t do anything. Sugar and saline, that’s all it was. She’s just weak. She’s going into shock. We need to lay her down and—”

Verhoven lifted his AR and pointed it at Dr. Klotz.

Tillman saw the fury and hopelessness on Verhoven’s face and knew he was going to take out his rage on the doctor. Like an impotent thug, he would strike out at the closest object to his wrath.

Tillman still didn’t know the exact location of the attack, or what its precise nature would be. But he knew that a Secret Service agent named Shanelle Klotz had been roped into doing something to further the plot. If he and Gideon could find out where she was stationed, they could stop the attack.

In short, it had to be enough. There was no time to mull over his options.

Tillman fired point-blank into Verhoven, racked the 870, fired again.

The shotgun tore huge pieces of meat out of Jim Verhoven’s body, exposing blue loops of viscera. He pitched over backward, torso in one direction, legs in another.

The horrific banging of the guns must have revived Lorene. She sat up, looking around in puzzlement. It took her a moment to figure out what had happened—her husband on the floor, a wisp of smoke rising from the barrel of Tillman’s shotgun.

She clawed at her Glock. “You motherfucker! You lying bastard!” she shouted. “You betrayed us!”

“I was never with you in the first place,” Tillman said.

She continued to claw at her Glock. Because she was crunched up against the stair railing, however, she couldn’t quite pull her gun from its holster.

“Don’t do it,” Tillman said, racking another round of buckshot into the 870. “Don’t.”

Her wide, crazed eyes stared straight into Tillman’s as she finally freed the Glock. She was smiling now, a broad fierce feral grin. She knew what was coming. But in some way she must have welcomed it—this, the culmination of everything her sad life had been aiming toward.

“Don’t,” Tillman repeated.

She pushed herself slowly to her feet, laughed at him, and raised the Glock.

He fired, racked, fired, racked, fired again.

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What was left of Lorene Verhoven fell slowly to the ground. Her shirt caught on the newel post at the bottom of the stair railing and tore free. She fell and hung there from the newel post, shirtless, her back bare and exposed. There were scars everywhere. Cuts, burns, thick ridges of pink skin—a topographical map of a stolen childhood.

“Come on,” Tillman said to Klotz. “We need to get your girls out of here.”

Klotz stood rooted to the floor until Tillman shoved him with the butt of his gun. Then he teetered forward, grabbed his daughters, and ran for the door.

Gideon heard the shots in his earphones and leaped from the seat of the car. He handcuffed Millwood to the steering wheel and sprinted across the front lawn. By the time he got to the door, Tillman, Klotz, and the two girls were coming out.

“Where’s Verhoven?” Gideon asked.

“Dead,” said Tillman. “Lorene, too.”

“You okay? Klotz? The girls?”

“We’re fine, but we need to get to the Capitol.”

“After we call this in. We’ve got a witness. Klotz can verify everything we say.” The doctor was eyeing him silently, the two girls clutching his trousers.

“We can’t wait for the bureaucrats to wrap everything up. By the time they’re finished taking our statements, the president, vice president, and most of the government will be dead.”

“We can at least give them the information we have.”

“You’re still thinking like a negotiator, Gideon. That’ll take hours. And then what? You think they’ll believe us? You think Dahlgren will believe us? You think President Wade will believe us?” He spat out Wade’s name as if it were a poisoned cherry pit.

Gideon knew his brother was right. Even if they had the time, they would be working against Dahlgren’s natural antipathy and suspicion of their efforts. He wouldn’t listen, and he would do everything in his power to stop them. They didn’t have all the details of the attack, so there was only one thing for them to do.

Gideon turned to Klotz. “You need to give us time to get inside. Will you do that?”

Klotz pursed his lips, then nodded.

“Promise me, Doctor.”

“I promise.”

“The cops will be here before long. Tell them it was a home invasion and a private security guard fought them off. Tell them he went downtown to file a report.”

Klotz agreed. “Please,” he asked. “If you see my wife, tell her we’re okay.”

“I will.”

Tillman shook his hand, then he and Gideon walked down to the car. Millwood was sitting quietly inside.

“Oh, this is interesting,” said Tillman.

“Long story,” said Gi;I
Q; said Gideon. He uncuffed the officer. “How do you feel about a little ride on the Metro?”

49

PRIEST RIVER, IDAHO

It was nearly five-fifteen when Nancy Clement saw the farmhouse in the distance. The bulldozer had been chugging steadily along the winding country road for two hours and she had not seen a house or a car the entire time, and still had no cell phone signal. The dozer’s tank was nearly empty.

But now she had hope that whoever lived in the farmhouse might help her get through to somebody in DC. The Caterpillar was going so slow, it almost seemed to be going backward.

“Hello!” she shouted. “Hello!”

But nobody answered. She realized she was still a long way away.

She wound around a curve and the house was lost in the trees. Then it appeared again, then it was lost again, then it appeared again.

“Hello!” she shouted again.

She saw movement now, a man out in the yard, doing something. She chugged closer and closer. Chopping wood. The guy was chopping wood.

As he heard the engine of the bulldozer, the man set down his axe and walked toward her in a leisurely fashion.

When she’d almost reached him, she pressed the decelerator pedal, then switched off the dozer’s engine so she could be heard.

“Taking the dozer out for a spin?” he said.

“Do you have a phone?”

“Lines are down.”

“What about Internet?” she said.

The man looked at her like she had asked him if he was a space alien.

“Internet?” she said. “Have you got Internet access?”

The man continued to look at her with a puzzled expression. She took in the axe, the tiny house with its peeling paint and sagging porch, the battered pickup truck, the cockeyed chicken coop, and she felt a wave of despair. Internet, hell, she’d be lucky if this guy even knew what a computer was.

“Internet?” she repeated feebly.

“Of course I’ve got Internet,” the man said, tossing his axe on a pile of split logs. “Who doesn’t have Internet?”

It turned out he was not a redneck farmer but an IT guy from Boise who had bought the farm as a vacation place and then moved there as a temporary cost-saving measure after losing his job the previous year. His name was Hank Adams. He was a big fan of The X-Files and other conspiracy-themed TV shows and books and movies. He didn’t have cable, but he had a big satellite dish that brought in all his favorite channels and the Internet. When she explained the nature of the fix she was in, he eventually came around and started to grow excited.

Soon she was sitting in front of a brand-new iMac with a m82222222222 T‡assive screen logging into the man’s Skype account. She typed in the number for the burner cell phone that Gideon had given her.

“Gideon?” she said, when he answered.

“I was wondering what the hell happened to you. Are you okay?”

“It’s going to be a gas attack,” she said breathlessly. “Hydrogen cyanide, I think. But I haven’t figured out the target.”

“It’s the State of the Union address,” Gideon said. “We’re on our way to the Capitol right now. Tillman and me.”

It took Nancy a moment to process this before she could respond. “A guy by the name of Dale Wilmot is behind this. He built a factory in Idaho to synthesize the stuff from some kind of root vegetable. It volatilizes at seventy degrees. They can smuggle the stuff into the Capitol in liquid form then spray it or spill it and it would vaporize.”

“Assuming the ambient air was above seventy.”

“Right.”

“It’s twenty-five degrees in Washington, DC, today.”

Nancy felt a stab of irritation at herself. How had she missed a thing like that? There was some piece of the pie that she was missing.

“They must have figured out some way to atomize it,” she said. “We need to call the Secret Service. We’ll meet them at the Rayburn building.”